Mr. Litt’s name might not be as widely known (at least outside of the real-estate world), but he cemented this role this week as the headache-causing investor pushing for change—and a possible sale—of BRE Properties, a rental landlord focused on the West Coast.

Earlier this year, we wrote about Mr. Litt’s opinion that BRE’s shares were undervalued and the company should sell itself. At the time, he thought they were worth $68 a share and they were trading around $51.

But nothing has happened, so Mr. Litt upped his game this week. Wednesday morning, just before BRE was scheduled to hold its quarterly conference call, Mr. Litt widely distributed a letter addressed to Irving F. Lyons III, BRE’s chairman.

Mr. Litt, whose firm, Land & Buildings, owns a small number of BRE shares, expressed disappointment that the board ignored a June offer of by a group led by Land & Buildings to buy the company for $60 a share, or about $4.6 billion. (It recently traded at $52.13.) He asks BRE to “form an independent committee of the Board to pursue a sale of the Company, and give serious consideration to our proposal.”

Not surprisingly, Chief Executive Constance Moore addressed the letter the conference call’s opening remarks. “This board and management team has always been committed to maximizing the value of the company and will consider any legitimate proposal that is in the best interest of shareholders,” she said.

On Wednesday, BRE issued a brief but strongly worded statement seemingly crafted to squash Mr. Litt’s credibility: “Land & Buildings had informally expressed an interest in BRE in mid-June, at which time BRE requested information about its capital sources. We have not received any response to those requests. As we understand it, Land and Buildings operates an investment fund with less than $200 million in total assets under management, which has neither the capital capacity nor demonstrated transaction experience to execute an acquisition of BRE. Accordingly, Land & Buildings’ proposal received today does not evidence a viable opportunity for the Company to consider.”

BRE declined to comment further.

Mr. Litt, who once worked for Citigroup, said he’s confident in his debt and equity financing. He declined to name any of the group members interested in buying the company. “I can’t lose my capital partners by having any chance of them being outed,” he said Thursday evening. “If she wants to know our consortium, I need to know that it is a legitimate process that will be taken seriously.”

There are reasons that analyst say BRE is a logical takeover candidate: It fell short of same-store annual revenue-growth expectations for 2012, in part because San Diego, its largest market, saw weaker than expected demand. It was also one of the last public apartment owners to install revenue-management software, which has helped peers to maximize revenue by analyzing the market and suggesting ideal rental rates for each apartment unit. Mr. Litt thinks the software has not generated the returns that have been seen with other companies. He also estimates the stock trades at roughly a 30% discount to what the buildings could sell for today, a signal to him that change is needed to increase the company’s value.

But its shares are up 2.7% this year, roughly in line with the apartment sector overall. Shares of Equity Residential, the nation’s largest publicly held owner of apartments, have fallen 2.88% since January.

The company also reported a strong second quarter, but that won’t be enough to change some investors’ minds. “It will take several successive and mistake-less quarters for BRE to win back full investor sponsorship,” said Richard Anderson, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets who downgraded BRE to ‘underperform’ in November, wrote in a client note. “A choppy track record can be difficult and time-consuming to reverse.”